


To Find Where I Belong

by misanthropiclycanthrope



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 00:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17355932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropiclycanthrope/pseuds/misanthropiclycanthrope
Summary: Everyone has a mark identifying their potential soulmateAfter seeing how terrible his parents' relationship ended up, Adam professes that soulmates are bullshit and he wants nothing to do with it.Tony never wears short sleeves to hide his mark and knows very well Adam's opinions, but he's well aware Adam is his potential soulmate and it kills him.But nothing stays hidden forever.





	To Find Where I Belong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writingmonsters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/gifts).



> Happy birthday, my friend!!
> 
> This is your prompt (in the summary), plus a lot of our headcanon, plus some other stuff? I don't know. Feels, mainly. Written somewhere in between the car crash, the plumbers, and horrible work schedules because writing you a gift was far more important than all these things.
> 
> (And to anyone else who didn't know they needed an Adam/Tony soulmate au in their life, enjoy!)

Accidents happen. In a busy kitchen, they are inevitable – a hot grill, a sharp knife, the hustle and bustle of many chefs filling several dozen tickets – but most are mercifully minor. A few seconds to patch up an injury, then service resumes.

But a few have more significant consequences. Unexpected, unpredictable. And yet perhaps, in the end, not entirely unwanted.

A typically busy service begins to verge on a nightmare. A packed restaurant, three absent chefs due to sickness, and an increasingly irritable Adam Jones do not a serene kitchen make. Every time Tony enters with a new ticket or to collect a completed order, the atmosphere is a little more strained, Adam increasingly louder, until it reaches the point something is about to give. A pot on the cusp of boiling over.

Tony sees the moment it happens, the flash in Adam’s electric eyes, the way his fingers tighten on the plate in his hand, the one that clearly hasn’t passed his inspection. Before Adam can draw his hand back, launch the thing at the wall in a violent pitch, Tony’s around the pass, his hand on Adam’s forearm, gentle pressure on the tense muscles bunched beneath his palm.

Somehow, it works. The furious flame behind Adam’s eyes flickers and dies, his arm relaxing, lowering the plate back to the pass. Tony rewards him with a smile, soft and calm, and shrugs out of his jacket.

“Okay. Where can I help?”

And that’s how Tony finds himself moving between stations, chopping and stirring and providing an extra pair of hands for whoever needs them, fetching and carrying for Adam, there at his elbow as he adds the final garnish to each plate.

It’s also how he finds himself reaching at just the wrong moment, knocking David’s elbow as he turns with a pan of simmering jus, and the next thing he knows is the pain of the hot sauce splashing across his hand and wrist.

“ _Mierda!_ ”

He’s at the sink in an instant, his hand under the cool, running water, soaking the now stained sleeve of his shirt, a welcome relief. He senses Adam before he sees him, a solid presence at his shoulder, his concern palpable as he demands to know what happened.

“Is nothing,” Tony assures him. “An accident.”

But Adam’s having none of it, has grasped Tony’s hand to check for damage, deft fingers working open his cuff.

Tony jerks, panicked. “No!” He tries to pull his arm free, but Adam is unyielding, resolute in his inspection. “Don’t!”

But it’s too late. Adam has his cuff unfastened, is rolling the soiled sleeve up away from his wrist, and Tony can do nothing to prevent him seeing what he’s kept concealed all these years.

It’s there, revealed for Adam to see; the dark, looping lines etched indelibly into his skin, the whorls and stripes and curls that are the perfect match of those upon his own wrist. Adam stills, slowly twists his own arm to bring it alongside Tony’s, to make sure, and Tony can’t look at him, doesn’t want to see the distaste on his face as he realizes the implication.

“Tony?”

Adam’s voice is quiet, almost accusing, and Tony feels like he might shatter. He is trembling in Adam’s grip, desperate to free himself. To flee.

“Let go.” It’s little more than a whisper, but as ragged as his heart. “Please.”

Several seconds pass and he doesn’t think Adam will, thinks he is destined to fall to pieces right here at Adam’s feet. It would be fitting, really. But then the strong fingers relax, just a little, just enough for Tony to pull his arm free. To clutch it safely against his chest and wish he could erase the evidence as easily as he has always hidden it.

Until now.

The kitchen is eerily quiet, the staff frozen. Some are merely curious about the accident, worried about Tony, but others have picked up on the strange tension that has suddenly settled over their head chef and maître d’, are watching with wary eyes. Tony edges past them, trying not to stumble over his own uncharacteristically clumsy feet as he retreats toward the sanctuary of the office. They’re still watching him, and he wants nothing more than to escape their scrutiny, hide his shame.

“You have service to finish,” he snaps, trying to muster the authority back into his voice, hoping it disguises the quaver. Nobody moves, still unsure about what has just happened, slow to gather their wits. “Back to work!”

There’s another beat of silence after Tony pulls the door firmly shut behind him, then the sounds of the kitchen resume. Clattering, crashing, calling; creating a wall that Tony hunkers behind, alone but unable to slow the hammering of his heart, his wrist throbbing from the heat of scalding hot liquid and Adam’s touch.

Gradually, the noise abates, service finished and clean up complete. Tony is finally able to breathe, alone once again, safe.

Or so he thinks.

A shadow looms through the frosted glass of the door, and suddenly he’s trapped, nowhere left to escape to when the door opens and Adam is right there. It’s too much. Tony tries to tell him to go, can’t quite make his tongue form the words.

“How’s your arm?” It’s a neutral enough question, but doesn’t quite conceal the bewilderment dancing beneath the deliberately still surface of Adam’s emotions.

“Fine.” He unconsciously pulls it a little closer to his body, pressing the wrist with its telltale mark into his stomach.

“Let me see?”

Tony can’t tell if it’s concern or curiosity behind the question, but he suspects the latter.

“I told you, is fine.”

Neither man makes a move, and silence falls around them, heavy with things unspoken. Finally, Adam can’t bear it any longer, hates how Tony has closed himself off, how he’s willing to ignore this, as if it means nothing.

As if he is _ashamed_.

“How come you never told me?” All these years, all the times Tony had looked at him with such poignant longing, he’d held his silence.

“It wasn’t important.”

Not important? Tony was willing to throw away his chance of happiness with little more than a shrug? “Do you know how rare it is for someone to find their soulmate?”

“Of course I do.” Tony sounds tired, as if having the weight of this long-held secret lifted from his shoulders has left him drained. “But the mark is no guarantee, only a sign of potential. You know this.”

And he can’t risk his heart on potential, has already felt the pain of rejection, of wanting what he can never have. Why offer up his soul when it would only be torn asunder. Just the constant reminder, flashed unhidden on Adam’s wrist, was enough to almost kill him.

“And you just decided there was no potential?”

Tony scoffs. “No, Adam. You made it perfectly clear that you don’t…” He can’t quite bring himself to say it, to acknowledge the painful absence that he’s always felt so keenly. “Knowing my mark matches yours won’t magically change that.”

It’s heartbreakingly clear why Tony has always kept it hidden, and it only now occurs to Adam that he’s never seen Tony in a t-shirt, with his arms on show. Even in Paris, at the height of summer, working in a hot kitchen, he always remained stubbornly covered, never so much as rolling his sleeves up. Adam had always assumed it was Tony being Tony, buttoned up and perfectly presented, the epitome of the finest maître d’ in Europe.

He never guessed there was something more.

“Is like you always said,” Tony continues, whether to convince Adam or himself, neither of them are certain. “It’s all just bullshit.”

And Adam _had_ said that, had watched his parents clash and fight and tear themselves apart, had been dragged through the ruins of their relationship with little more than the certainty that soulmates were a thing of fiction, a fucked-up fantasy story to give kids false hope. The dark, curling lines on his arm were a reminder, a permanent taunt that life would never be perfect, a punctuation mark beneath the careless scars and needle tracks.

He’d never bothered to consider the alternative, the possibility he might be wrong.

He’s at the desk in only a couple of strides, and Tony tenses like a spooked animal, preparing for fight or flight. Another step, and Tony’s on his feet, backing up until he’s at the wall and can retreat no further. To his surprise, Adam stops, but that gaze is still fixed upon him, holding Tony just as fast as if he had him pinned.

“Don’t.” The plea falls from Tony’s lips on a breath. “Please. I can’t…”

He doesn’t want Adam’s pity, his guilt and apologies. He can’t bear to have his heart trampled again.

Adam holds out a hand, a silent request, and Tony could still slip away, make his escape, tell Adam to forget it and cover his mark back up. But something stops him, _Adam_ stops him, that almost magnetic pull that has always drawn them back together. He raises his arm, lets Adam take his hand and turn his wrist upward, the still-unfastened sleeve falling away and laying his mark bare.

It had become second nature to Tony, guarding his heart, his _soul_. But now he offers it, tentative but willing to take the risk. He has nothing left to lose.

Adam traces the ink-dark lines with the pad of his thumb, the design so familiar and yet entirely new. He pauses at the white mark of the scar, a faint blemish cutting diagonally through the elegant curves, hears Tony’s sharp intake of breath.

It had been a moment of wretched heartache, no real intent beyond the desire to mar the symbol of his impossible destiny, just as Adam had so cruelly crushed his hope. It’s faded now, a faint reminder of when it had almost all gone irreparably wrong, but Adam divines its significance, his crystal eyes suddenly filling with remorse.

Then, there is only resolve.

Tony watches, unblinking, as Adam lifts his arm, presses his lips to the palm of his hand, and then again to the soft skin at the inside of his wrist, to the mark there. His gaze remains on Tony’s face, soft and awed and still a little stunned.

A blink, and Tony recovers himself, still trapped in Adam’s thrall but having gathered enough of his wits to instinctively reach for Adam’s arm, the fingers of his free hand brushing lightly down his bare forearm, finding his wrist, a shy request.

Adam gives his arm freely, lets Tony look, lets him touch for the first time and wonder at it. His umber eyes eventually find their way back to Adam’s face, a question in their depths, seeking reassurance that this is real, that they can truly have this.

There’s only one response Adam is capable of making. He ducks his head, lips finding Tony's and swallowing his soft gasp in a gentle kiss. Tony’s fingers clutch reflexively around his wrist as he presses forward, and Adam gathers him close, holding him tight even when their lips part, each unwilling to release the other.

“How did I not know?” Adam asks the question of himself. “How did I never realize it was _you_?”

He feels Tony’s shrug. “Why _would_ it be me?”

“Because how could it be anyone else? Who else would put up with my shit? Put me in my place when I’m being a dick? Tell me to eat my own tongue?” Tony snorts the smallest of laughs and, encouraged, Adam continues. “You’re so capable, so brilliant, so sweet, so kind, and so goddamn stubborn.” He’s smiling. It’s so obvious, and so perfect, and it suddenly all makes so much sense. “Of _course_ it’s you.”

Tony fidgets in Adam’s arms, his gaze slipping away, bashful. “I’m nothing special.”

Adam almost laughs – _almost_ – because nothing could be further from the truth. “Antonio Balerdi Junior, you are the most special thing in the world.” He crooks a finger beneath Tony’s chin, waits until Tony looks at him. “You’re my _soulmate_.”

“Yes,” Tony says, full of wonder. It hadn’t been the easiest of journeys, but they had found each other in the end. “I suppose I am.” And, just because he can, he lifts himself onto his toes and kisses Adam again, fierce and fervent, until they’re both smiling and stupid with the rush.

Adam takes Tony’s face between his palms, so soft and familiar and precious, and how has he not seen it before? Of course this fussy, feisty, caring, clever little man is his soulmate, the only person whose faith in him kept burning even when he seemed determined to destroy everything around him. It had flickered and faltered, but never quite been extinguished, and Adam doesn’t deserve someone this wonderful.

He vows to earn that devotion, to return it a hundredfold.

“Let me cook you dinner, and then…” Adam trails off, too much potential for him to settle on any one possibility.

“And then?” Tony asks, a whisper, almost not daring to hope.

And then? Anything. _Everything_. Whatever they want, whatever it is soulmates do. It doesn’t matter; they have the rest of their lives to figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from 'Indefinite leave to remain' by the Pet Shop Boys


End file.
